(Pocket-lint) – In a move that will perhaps surprise no one, Samsung has announced that it is folding Samsung Pass into Samsung Pay. The change mirrors Google’s own Wallet announcement, where there will be one location for all your secure tokens, rather than having them spread across different apps.
Samsung will be sticking with the Samsung Pay naming, but the service will be a lot more inclusive, so all those elements you want to keep secured will be in one place – and that will also expand to digital assets, such as Bitcoin.
The update is rolling out initially in South Korea and will expand to other regions too, when we’ll get a better idea of exactly what’s going to be supported.
The new service will let you access your airline boarding passes, for instance, as well as register digital keys for entry to cars, so there’s some ecosystem building to be done here.
Much of the usefulness of any such app will depend on how well it integrates all the services you want to use.
Of course, it’s going to be competition with Google’s new Wallet – just as Samsung devices have offered the choice between Samsung Pay and Google Pay in the past – and we’re guessing that’s why it’s starting on home turf in Korea.
The change will come to devices running Android 9 and above, but currently it’s not clear when we’ll see changes in the US or Europe.
Writing by Chris Hall.
